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Mobile tower radiations: COAI, AUSPI dispel fears

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CIOL Bureau
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MUMBAI, INDIA: In order to diffuse the fear about the health hazards of cellphone tower radiations and also to address the concerns raised by various health and civic bodies and other environment forums, the telcom bodies COAI and AUSPI today in Mumbai said the fear about mobile tower radiations is just a myth and not a reality.

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The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) brought along some eminent doctors and tech academicians from Indian Institute of Madras (IITM) and Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai to support their claim.

According to S C Khanna, AUSPI secretary general, the mobile towers are integral part of mobile communication infrastructure, however there’s been wide spread rumors or myths about ill-effects on health caused by radio frequency (RF) emission.

“It is pertinent to note that RF exposure of the public started many years ago when radio, television came into being, however no long term effects have been observed so far,” Khanna said. He added that allegation of tower radiation is far from reality.

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While the telcos are highly criticized for setting of numerous towers in residential areas and localities, Rajan S Mathews, COAI director general said that the existing landline infrastructure has been developed without backhaul, which has resulted into high number of tower networks.

He criticized the non-existence of stringent regulations and norms of buildings and structures along with limited spectrum supply for more number of cell towers.

“In India, we don’t have strong regulations and standardization for building and structures and so the wireless communication gets impacted. And to overcome this situation, we need to set up more towers. We have very limited spectrum and we need to reuse that available spectrum with the more number of towers,” Mathews commented.

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Further he said, the cell towers operators in the non-ionizing radiation, which doesn’t cause ill effects on humans compared to ionizing radiations.

“Independent studies done by World Health Organization (WHO), International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and other bodies have shown no evidence of RF radiations from cell towers causing health hazards,” Mathews stated.

Both COAI and AUSPI clarified that the telecom industry has accepted all the guidelines and compliance norms issued by Government of India, Department of Telecommunication (DoT) as well as ICNIRP.

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“These guidelines are based on short term and immediate health impacts. However there’s no proof or concrete evidence of long term ill effects caused by electro magnetic fields or radio emission,” Professor Dr. S Raju from Madurai said.

Earlier she along with Professor Dr. P R Goundan from Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology Madras (CEWIT) and IIT Madras had jointly conducted independent study of electro magnetic radiation measurements at 180 locations in New Delhi during July. The study showed that measurements of the cumulative emissions were as per ICNRIP guidelines.

In addition, some eminent doctors and physicians like Dr. Siddharth from Ahmedabad, Dr. Manisha Mohan from Mumbai, Dr. Purvish Parekh and Dr. Ashok Balsekar stood along with the telecom bodies in their claim of tower radiations are safe.

However, whatever the studies conducted so far by various bodies and research agencies world over have written off any kind of short term health impact of cell tower radiations but there’s no conclusion on the long term health impact.

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